I'm not convinced as to the accuracy of the quote that follows. Some of it is clearly bollocks. Which raises the question, can we believe any of it?

It's a bit weird, because the bit that interests me is merely a footnote. A footnote about Porter in a Dublin jail:

"Before proceeding to the biographical account of this extraordinary person, which it is my intention to give, I think it proper previously to state the very singular manner in which our friendship had its commencement. One evening, in the month of October, 1812, I had the misfortune, from some circumstances here unnecessary to mention, to be conveyed for a night's lodging to the watch-house in Dublin. I had there the good fortune to meet Mr. Odoherty, who was likewise a prisoner. He was seated on a wooden stool, before a table garnished with a great number of empty pots of porter.*

* We beg leave to hint to our Irish correspondent, that if the pots were empty, they could scarcely be termed pots of porter.— Blackwood. [And I beg leave to hint that, in the watch-house in Dublin, in 1812, such a liquid as porter was not at all likely to be in request. The drink of that region would inevitably be — whiskey punch. In 1812, very little malt liquor was used in Ireland. Most of what was made was exported to the British army then under Wellington in the peninsula, to the British West India islands, and to the East Indies. The soldiers drank it, of course, as if it were so much "mother's milk"—only a great deal stronger. In the West Indies, where the drought was great, the draughts were copious. In the East Indies, whenever what was called Cork porter and Fermoy ale happened to arrive, in anything like good condition, it brought a great price, and was imbibed freely. But, in those days, brewers had not arrived at the present certainty of making ale as drinkable on the banks of the Ganges as in London, Dublin, Cork, and Edinburgh, In 1812, London porter was scarcely exported to the East or West Indies: Edinburgh ale was not known much beyond the city of its birth; and the supplies were sent from the porter brewery of Beamish and Crawford, of Cork, and the ale brewery of Thomas Walker & Co., of Fermoy. The last-named concern has wholly ceased, but Cork city rejoices in Beamish and Crawford's porter brewery, whence it also taken one of its parliamentary representatives (1855), in the person of Frank Beamish. At present, the pale ale of Bass and Alsop — rival houses in the small English town of Burton-upon-Trent — is the favorite tipple in British India, where one man asks another to "take a glass of Bass" with him, just as, elsewhere, he would invite him to take a glass of champagne. It is surprising that in Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay, some capitalist does not commence an ale and porter brewery, and go in to make a fortune thereby. Long after Odoherty's time, Guinness's Dublin porter came into note in rivalry with "London Stout." The story goes that Guinness had no great note until the full body of one particular brewing attracted the attention of those who malt. On cleaning out the vat, there were found the bones and part of the dress of one of the workmen, who had been missing for some weeks. Guinness, it is said, sang small about the matter, but to give his porter the required body, instead of boiling down a man, as before, substituted a side of beef, and has continued the ingredient from that time to this. So, after all, even a tee-totoller must admit that Guinness's porter is but a malted description of — beef-tea! — M."
"Miscellaneous writings of the late Dr. Maginn, Volume 1" by William Maginn, 1855, pages 3 - 4.

There's a clear claim there that Porter from Cork - in particular Beamish and Crawford's Porter - was exported to the East Indies at a very early date: 1812. I know that Guinness exported their Stout to India a couple of decades later. But this is the earliest mention of Irish Porter in India. Just a shame it's from someone who can't spell Allsopp properly.

Then there's the stuff about the workman dissolving into Guinness. Obviously totally untrue, as all stories like this inevitably are. If for no other reason than that at the period in question putting anything other than malt, hops, sugar, yeast and water was illegal. And the authorities took the rules pretty damn seriously.

Monday, 30 May 2011

One colleague. My first programming job, at Legal and General. She was from Bolton. Notlob. I can remember that joke being made.

What a place to work, Legal and General. For the canteen. Hot food - great choice - and a fully licensed bar. Shepherd Neame on cask. For 20% less than the pub price. Nice. Especially having cask, drink of the gods.*

"It's a pop-tart cat, going through space with a rainbow flowing out of its bottom. Can you imagine how annoying it gets after a while?"

"No imagination necessary, Andrew."

This is the quote I wanted to share::

"The leisure of the young is largely concerned with courtship—and dance halls provide no alcohol. Once mated, the leisure of a considerable section of the male population (the pub-goers) is concerned with "I pass a couple of hours in 'ere ow't road o't' wife."

Pub numbers. Pub closures. A very topical topic. But one that's been kicking around for longer than my lifetime.

This is a very specific look at pubs in a particular Lancashire town. In particular, how many of them there were. I'm bringing this quite specific account because it's typical of the developments in pub numbers across the UK in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. The same pieces of legislation had much the same effect everywhere. Principally, a sharp reduction in the number of pubs and virtually now new licences ever issued.

At the time this piece was written in the late 1930's, there were 304 pubs in Bolton.

"In this book historical material is only being used to illustrate facts about the contemporary pub, and not for the sake of trying to include a "history of the pub" as such. Now, in order to understand more fully the factors of pub distribution, and to deal with the basis of the different types of pub that are examined later, we require some relevant history.

Some Worktown pubs can be traced back from before the Industrial Revolution. There is a list of 61 names and addresses of pubs existing in 1824. Nineteen of these are still in existence, same names and addresses.

Mackies Worktown Directory and Almanack for 1849 gives the following list:

Inns 117
Beerhouses 188
Beerhouses supposed to exist without a licence 15
Inns and Beerhouses where thieves and prostitutes resort 20
Inns and Beerhouses where gambling is practised 13
Inns and Beerhouses having musical entertainments 14

That is, ignoring the pubs without licences, Worktown had one more licence in 1848 than in 1937. Only, then there were 170 inhabitants per pub, now 559.

Said Mr. Taylor, Coroner for the Borough, 1848, in a speech to the licensing magistrates:

These ale and beerhouses would hold every man, woman, and child in the Borough . . . there is a drinking place for every 25 houses . . . such are the present resources for selling drink — or poison — some called it by one name, some by the other.

By 1854 there were another 25 beerhouses in existence, though the number of full licences had remained the same; and the absolute number of pubs continued to rise, until in 1869 there were 452 of them.

By then there was also a powerful and militant temperance movement in existence. At a packed meeting of 2,000 people in the new Temperance Hall the Rev. C. Garrett declaimed "No working man in Lancashire need be without clothes, but if he will insist in clothing the landlord and landlady in purple and fine linen, he must be content to remain in poverty and rags". Since 1830 there had been no restrictions whatever on the issue of beer licences; this policy remained the same for 39 years, when the Act of 1869 empowered the magistrates to refuse to grant the renewal or issue of beer licences; and another Act of 1872 still further restricted the conditions of issue and renewal of licences. The general basis of the present day licensing system had been established. From that time it is possible to trace statistically the ratio between pub and population variation.

Though in 1869 there were nearly half as many pubs again as there had been in existence twenty years earlier, the amount of full licences had only increased by 6, from 117 to 123. Next year, when the Act came into force, 69 beerhouses were abolished right away. The diagram opposite shows that the population: pub ratio has never subsequently decreased, steadily rising from 210 people per pub in 1870 to its 1935 figure of 559.

For nearly thirty years after the new act came into force, the absolute number of pubs continued to fall, while the population was still rising. In 1898 the borough boundaries were enlarged, which besides adding to the population increased the number of pubs by 61. (The break in the curves on the diagram, that are joined by dotted lines, indicate this.) For a few years the absolute number of pubs increased again slightly, but after 1903 began a long, steady fall, decreasing on an average by about three pubs every year. And in 1928, after a period of stagnation, the population too began to fall."
"The Pub and the People" by Mass Observation, 1943 (reprinted 1987), page 73.

The Beer Act of 1830 ushered in an, historically considered, untypically liberal licensing regime. Basically anyone could open a beer house, that is a pub that only sold beer and no spirits. Unsurprisingly, the number of pubs rocketed. From the 1869 Act mentioned onwards, increasingly strict legislation was introduced, mostly designed to close beer houses. It was a task that continued into the 1980's. Sometime around then beer houses finally disappear from the licensing statistics, having fallen to just a couple of hundred in the 1970's. As you can see from the table below.

You'll notice that Bolton was very close to the national average for the number of pubs per head of population in the 1930's: 1 per 559 people, when in 1938 the average was 519.

Pubs in England and Wales

Date

fully-licensed pub

beer house

Total Pubs

clubs

Total on Licences

Off Licences

On and Off licences

population

pop. per pub

1900

102,189

..

..

30,515,000

299

1905

99,478

6,589

106,067

25,405

124,883

1910

92,484

7,536

100,020

24,438

116,922

33,651,600

364

1915

86,626

8,902

95,528

23,202

109,828

1920

83,432

8,994

92,426

22,198

105,630

35,230,200

422

1931

57,072

19,814

76,886

14,377

91,263

22,105

113,368

39,988,000

520

1938

56,173

17,747

73,920

16,951

90,871

22,052

112,923

38,348,400

519

1941

56,961

17,249

74,210

15,864

90,074

21,756

111,830

41,748,000

563

1951

59,757

13,664

73,421

19,511

92,932

23,669

116,601

43,815,000

597

1961

64,570

4,366

68,936

24,418

93,354

23,934

117,288

46,196,000

670

1965

65,353

1,217

66,570

23,598

96,157

26,352

122,509

45,870,100

689

1971

63,640

447

64,087

26,548

101,863

28,166

130,029

49,152,000

767

1976

64,666

361

65,027

28,203

108,905

32,595

141,500

49,184,500

756

1982

68,373

30,269

121,232

39,362

160,594

49,634,000

726

1985

70,331

30,277

125,871

42,646

168,517

49,763,600

708

1991

74,299

28,999

134,404

47,944

182,348

51,099,000

688

1994

75,522

28,520

135,451

47,735

183,186

41,620,500

551

1995

75,392

28,277

133,711

45,986

179,697

51,820,600

687

1998

77,934

26,461

134,174

45,425

179,599

52,421,400

673

2000

77,876

25,032

131,682

45,450

177,132

52,942,800

680

2001

78,540

25,785

132,293

44,696

176,989

52,211,000

665

2003

81,933

23,912

135,307

47,478

182,785

2004

81,455

23,664

133,283

46,582

179,865

Sources:

Statistical Handbook of the British Beer and Pub Association 2005, page 62